My fiancé is obsessed with BJs. And no, I’m not talking about the sexual act. I’m talking about the store. The damn bulk warehouse store.
I, on the other hand, as you can probably guess, am not obsessed with BJs. In fact, I devote a significant portion of each day to actively loathing BJs.
And here’s why:
- The quantities: we are not running a summer camp. We are not running a general store (which, coincidentally, is what we’ve taken to calling our stash of cleaning supplies: The General Store). We are simply acquiring groceries for two average sized, decently in shape adults. When we get a dog and/or have kids, I will revise my opinion but until then do we really need a bag of cucumbers? No one has any business eating that many cucumbers, unless they’re turned into pickles, in which case they belong in a single, solitary jar.
- The packaging: it’s like the CEO of BJs said, “Hey, I have a great idea. Let’s sell Lindt chocolate bars. And because they’re already wrapped in foil and boxed in cardboard, let’s pair them up and wrap them in even more cardboard, topped off with plastic! This way people will think they’re getting some sort of special deal.” And it doesn’t stop with chocolate bars. BJs also sells pairs of cereal boxes, pairs of almond milk cartons, even quintuplet groupings of BBQ condiments all wrapped in plastic (if you want to see ‘Merica in all its pre-diabetic glory, stop by your local bulk warehouse store on Memorial Day weekend. You. Will. Be. Appalled.)
- The free boxes: Because BJs sells a lot of Things-in-Boxes, they provide additional free “boxes” for you to put your smaller boxes into under the false pretense of making it easier to lug everything back to your car. But the free boxes aren’t really boxes. They’re weird box-like trays. They usually only have walls on 2 sides— 3 if you’re lucky— and said walls are about as tall and structurally sound as a sand castle built by a toddler. A drunk toddler. I hate them. I hate them more than life itself.
- More about the free boxes: Apparently I hate those things so much that I still have more to say. What really gets me going is the way that they just sit there in the soon-to-be-recycled-pile, creeping frighteningly close to the invisible line that separates the kitchen from my office. I always tell PIC not to take them home from BJs in the first place—don’t even bring them into the house!!!—but he always does anyway. And even when he promises to get rid of them, he interprets this to mean “flatten them out and leave them on the kitchen floor for people to trip over, because tray/box crime scenes are all the rage in interior design.”
What? What’s that you say? I could simply take the flattened tray/boxes out to the recycling bin myself?
Well.
I wish I could.
But it’s not that simple.
And I know this because I tried it once. But no sooner had I wrangled the mass of paper-cut inducing cardboard into the recycling bin than one of its many evil tentacles caught on my necklace (a necklace that PIC bought for me, no less) and almost very nearly pulled me to my death. I could have been asphyxiated.
No.
Those things are dangerous.
On another note, I’m pretty sure that our proximity to BJs was the main (and possibly the only) reason that PIC decided to move in with me.
And since he’s moved in:
- I’ve never run out of toothpaste.
- I don’t have to blow my nose on dirty laundry any more. I can, if I want to, but I can also use a tissue from one of the many boxes conveniently placed around the house. I have a choice now.
- Our soap never runs out. And this is a particularly joyous development because soap is tricky. You realize it’s gone as soon as you get into the shower, but by then you’re already wet so it’s hardly the time to go scrounging around for a replacement, so you wash a little less thoroughly than usual and make a mental note to replace the soap as soon as you finish your shower but by then your mind is onto other things (like, what’s for breakfast? And, do I have enough time to shave my legs?) and before you know it, it’s the next morning and the vicious cycle of “F*ck! No soap???” begins again. But that never happens any more. We always have soap now.
- The kitchen floor is generally clean. Ditto the bathroom sink. And the toilets. Even the edge of the steps down to the basement that I didn’t even know were dusty. When I hosted a friend’s bridal shower last spring, PIC simply asked if I wanted him to clean the house beforehand; I answered with a rather flummoxed, “Umm yeah, actually, that would be great,” and stood there feeling rather dumbfounded as he pulled out (and used) one cleaning supply from our own personal General Store after another…
He is such a good provider. I almost can’t believe it sometimes. And I love him for it.
Him.
Not BJs.
Okay maybe BJs too. But only a little bit…
